Time Signature
Highway-friendly rock 'n' roll...
Genre: hard rock 'n' roll
Being part of the metal landscape, hard rock itself covers broad gamut of styles, ranging from the dirty rock 'n' roll of AC/DC to the polished AOR-tinged music of Toto and Boston. The Finnish band Guns of Glory's "On the Way to Sin City" definitely belongs to the AC/DC-colored end of the hard rock continuum.
Combining AC/DC-informed rock 'n' roll with the chucking guitars of 80s metal and the energy of punk rock, Guns of Glory definitely have found a formula which has great potential, if they adjust it a bit. Tracks like 'El Savior', 'Drive-by Lover', and 'Rock 'n' Load' a well as 'Never Stop (That's Rock 'n' Roll)' are pretty good, striking a nice balanced between metal and hard rock 'n' roll much in the same way that Disneyland After Dark do on "No Fuel Left for the Pilgrims" and "Riskin' It All". 'Don't Fool with the Guns' draws on both punk and proto-thrash metal, which works incredibly well. Other tracks like 'Whiskey Girls'.
But, while there definitely are some good hard rock tracks on this album, there is still room for improvement, and I think that 'Sisters of Sin' and 'I'm Glad You're Gone' are way sub par compared to the rest of the album, limping heavily behind the tracks that accompany them. The lyrics are a bit on the silly side, but that is forgivable given the history of the genre and its preference for sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll as lyrical contents.
In all this is a fine hard rock 'n' roll release which should appeal to fans of both the AC/DC and the Disneyland After Dark-strands of hard rock, and perhaps even some fans of punk rock. In any case, it is the perfect soundtrack for an afternoon of speeding on the highway.